The White House will hold off on launching its online health exchange where small businesses can shop for coverage until November 2014, an HHS official confirmed Wednesday.

Small businesses will still have the option to purchase coverage through the new marketplace but will not be able to do so online. Instead, until next fall, employers with fewer than 50 workers will need to work through a broker or agent to buy health plans for their employees.

“We’ve concluded that we can best serve small employers by continuing this offline process while we concentrate on both creating a smoothly functioning online experience in the SHOP Marketplace, and adding key new features, including an employee choice option and premium aggregation services, by November 2014,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services wrote in a Q&A distributed to health law stakeholders.

The SHOP portal had been expected to open this month based on prior administration statements.

My brother is a small business owner. This is the letter that he sent out to his employees last week:

There has been a lot of talk about Obamacare and the changes to the law on the news lately. Here is my situation as a business owner, and as a parent of a child with a preexisting condition:

Because of the preexisting health concerns of my child, we could not get our own coverage in the past. We had to be part of a group plan, so we decided to purchase group insurance for the employees of the company, which meant that we would pay 50% of the premiums for our staff. That 50% was then a tax credit to us. So if we owed $10k in taxes each month, and paid $8k in staff insurance premiums, we now only owed $2k in taxes. My accountant has informed me that this tax credit has been eliminated under Obamacare. This means that next year, we will see an $8k per month increase in our taxes.

Now we can get our family insurance with a $0 deductible for a much lower rate than paying the monthly premiums for our employees through (I hate to say it) healthcare.gov by purchasing a “gold” plan. If we attempt to obtain coverage through the company, we will still have to maintain the 50% payment of our employees, the premiums for which will be increasing our half by an additional $2K a month. For this amount, we will have a $2K deductible, and we will lose that tax credit. This means that our insurance expenses and taxes will increase to $218,000 per year if we continue providing insurance for our staff. This level of expense is just not sustainable. For this reason, we will be dropping the insurance that we offer as a small business to our employees, will get our own policy, and direct our staff to the healthcare.gov site.

This is just the insurance view. There is more to Obamacare that most do not realize. It has forced many in my industry to close due to the cost of compliance with the regulations put on food supply operators for calorie and nutrition information disclosure. My accountant informs me that the costs of compliance with this law change will cost an additional $50,000 initially, and we are unable to calculate the ongoing costs because the regulatory agencies have not yet written the regulations.

My opinion is mixed. The preexisting condition of my child is now moot. The cost to me appears to be cancelled out so far with lower deductibles. However, it is forcing my staff to now be transferred onto the health care exchanges for insurance, and they will now have to pay 100% of their premiums. Due to the added taxes and expenses associated with the compliance with this law, we are not in a position to give any of you a raise to offset the additional costs. Depending on how my taxes work out at the end of the year, there is a distinct possibility that we will have to scale back or even sell out our remaining contracts and lay off our entire staff. We will inform you as soon as we know more.

“Now we can get our family insurance with a $0 deductible for a much lower rate than paying the monthly premiums for our employees through (I hate to say it) healthcare.gov by purchasing a “gold” plan.”

???

I haven’t seen a single individual or family policy available thru healthcare.gov, gold nor platinum, that has a $0 deductible or $0 out of pocket.

In my zip code (I’m in NE Florida), the best a single 42-year-old non smoker could do on a healthcare.gov gold plan would be $1300 deductible, $2600 out of pocket max. Gold plans generally only pay 80%, requiring you to stump up 20%. (Platinum plans pay 90%, requiring 10% co-insurance, and I don’t see any of those with $0 deductibles either).

For a family of three, say a non-smoking 42 year old, a non-smoking 35 year old, and a 12-year-old kid, the best gold plan on healthcare.gov has a $2600 deductible and $5200 out of pocket, and then from there they go up to $10,000 out of pocket and $12,500 out of pocket. And again, that’s a gold plan.

Healthsherpa has all of the healthcare.gov plans in their database — but unlike healthcare.gov, it actually works… See for yourself:

People believe what they want to believe. It’s like when you’re in a hospital and you have to sign a form stating that you know “bad outcomes.” THEN, in a study, people went around to question the patients if they remembered being told “they could die.” NOPE. That they could lose a leg. Ditto. NOPE.

2013 ends lots of insurance policies for millions of people. What’s going to substitute for this loss?

Will people, if they can, curb costs by going to doctors in Mexico? What makes you think places like Memorial Sloan Kettering, and the Mayo Clinic, NEITHER one is covered by Obama’s health plan … Are just going to shut their doors?

I don’t see Obama being asked by politicians to help them raise money at fundraisers.

We also knew Obama said there were “30 million Americans without insurance.” His plan was supposed to cure all that.

Today? Workers saw jobs that paid them for 40 hour work weeks, told they’re now part time. 29 hours. Tops.

Maybe, we’ll be measuring “enthusiasm” by seeing what’s in store at Christmas? If sales are anemic, how does this bode well for the politicians?

Go ahead. Put your faith in slogans. But one hasn’t been invented yet to cover this topic. Perhaps you should write slogans on band-aids and see if it helps sell this “It ain’t free. It’s not the plan you had. And, it costs more.”

Propaganda artists want to fool you. They want you to believe they’re gonna find a way to sell you this dreck.

@divemedic — If your brother was eligible for a tax credit, chances are he is still eligible. As a small business owner, he can apply for coverage on the SHOP marketplace (he may need a broker to assist depending on your state). The tax credit is now ONLY available by enrolling on the SHOP marketplace. Please let him know, and I hope that would be helpful to him, his family & employees.
If he did find an individual/family plan with 0 deductible, it of course would be less than paying for himself plus all his employees. I hope he is still eligible for the tax credit, and good luck to him.